The EU supports the Sahel countries – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger – in areas of shared interest such as security, migration, terrorism, the humanitarian response, resilience building and long-term development.

The Sahel region faces a number of pressing challenges such as extreme poverty, frequent food and nutrition crises, conflict, high population growth rates, institutional weaknesses, irregular migration and related crimes such as trafficking in human beings and migrant smuggling. Violent extremism also poses serious security challenges to the region and has potential spill-over effects outside the region, including Europe.